Affect or Effect

Aprende como usar “Affect or effect” en inglés aquí:

It is very common to confuse the words affect and effect. So common, that they deserve their own lesson for both native speakers and ESL/EFL students in order to understand them. First, we’ll start with a quick tip:

Use AFFECT as a verb.
Use EFFECT as a noun.

The effect is affected by the cause.

Affect

Affect is most commonly used as a verb. It means: to influence, to produce a change in something, to make a difference, or to have an effect on something

The crime rate affects property values.

Your poor decisions affect everyone around you.

NOTE: Affect is also less commonly used as a noun to mean: an emotion or desire someone appears to have (used in psychology). She displayed a happy affect, though she was tortured inside.

Effect

Effect is most commonly used as a noun. It means: a change as a result of some action; the result or consequence of an action

Poor property values are the effect of high crime rates.

The new law goes into effect on July 22nd.

It can also mean: something that gives the impression of something else

The special effects in that film were so believable.

NOTE: Effect is also less commonly used as a verb to mean: to cause something to happen, to accomplish or achieve

It looks like Mandela was right: You should always talk to a man in in his own language.

When it comes to business and home negotiations, we know there are numerous factors that can affect our decisions. In general, rational and logical thought processes can help us to keep an even keel, but research on The Foreign Language Effect shows that simply conducting negotiations in a foreign language might be all you need to do.

Many remember the famous Nelson Mandela quote, “If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.” Little did Mandela know that he was right on the money, as a 2011 study shows. The Foreign Language Effect was working in Mandela’s favor, and he didn’t even know why.

It all comes down to logical and rational thinking. Our emotions are very strongly tied to our native language, but much less so to a foreign language. Therefore, when we speak in a foreign language, we can see things more clearly, and our decisions are less clouded by emotions. We know that Mandela learned Afrikaans while imprisoned, and used it to his advantage when negotiating the end of apartheid.

One of the strongest factors affecting our decision-making is the fear of loss, referred to as the loss-aversion effect. It is even stronger than the pleasure of gaining something. This bias in decision-making is closely linked to our emotions as well.

Hayakawa Keysar and his colleagues knew this when they set out to test The Foreign Language Effect. They set up a problem, and explained it in two ways: one in terms of losses and one in terms of gains, even though the results would be the same. The results showed the loss aversion clearly, but only when the respondents participated using their native language. When participants responded in a foreign language, they were equally likely to choose both options. Essentially, when engaging in a foreign language, the loss aversion effect disappeared across all languages and levels of fluency studied.

The authors of the study proposed that these effects took place because communicating in a foreign language “Provides greater cognitive and emotional distance than a native tongue does.” Essentially, our emotions are not as prominent in a foreign language, allowing us to think and negotiate in a more detached manner.

Further studies found that the foreign language effect is only related to emotional topics. When deciding on topics that are already free of emotions, it doesn’t seem to matter what language you choose. This information supports the idea that the foreign language effect happens due to the lack of emotional connection in a foreign language.

So next time you’re making an incredibly difficult emotion-laden decision, take a moment to write or speak about it in English! Maybe you’ll see things much more clearly.

Reading Comprehension

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